Themed collection Soft Matter Pioneering Investigators

This review covers experimental approaches to induce controlled adhesive forces between particles and discusses the effects of inter-particle cohesion on granular mechanics across scales, from individual particles to bulk behavior.

Connecting active and passive monomers to form partially active polymers can lead to directed transport towards regions of high or low chemical concentration.

We demonstrate the circle-Hough transform (CHT) as a highly efficient and general computer vision tool for the quantitative assessment of droplet size from optical microscopy images of Pickering emulsions.

We show that supported bilayers from ellipsoidal pores that propagate perpendicular to the stretch direction akin the fracturing of soft gels.

Liquid crystalline networks able to work as photoresponsive actuators were prepared by different photopolymerization approaches. This work shows how the macromolecular structure influences the performances during both thermal and light stimulation.

Applying longitudinal cuts to the surface of a self-avoiding tethered membrane destabilizes its flat phase and leads to the formation of novel phases fully controlled by the balance between number of cuts and the edge width.

We theoretically study Taylor's swimming sheet near a Winkler elastic solid. This minimal approach allows us to explicitly formulate analytically the generic behaviours and mechanisms of microswimming near soft boundaries.

Proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) and uniform manifold approximation & projection (UMAP) are used to study the relaxation dynamics of thermoresponsive polymers and single-chain nanoparticles with energy-conserving DPD simulations.

The influence of nanoparticle size, shape and wettability on adhesion at liquid interfaces is explored using a combination of atomic force microscopy and computer simulations.

Stress quantification can be observed during single fiber pull-out test in a polymer matrix composite with stress sensing molecules.

Accuracy in the measurement of mechanical properties is essential for precision engineering and for the interrogation of composition–property relationships.

We present our computational framework for the rapid analysis of polymer structure and inverse design strategy (RAPSIDY) that enables inverse design of polymers for desired structures by accelerating multiscale structure stability evaluation.

μ-Ballistic simulations performed on the PGN thin films reveal a positive influence of cohesive energy density on the performance. PGN with heavier nanoparticles arrest bullets more rapidly, however, lighter particles exhibit a higher .

We propose a new framework to characterise yield stress fluids for direct ink writing that enables us to link trends in rheological metrics with printing resolution.

We present a strategy for obtaining membranes on substrates with tunable geometry and stiffness for biological and material science studies.